SUPPORT GROWS TO KEEP TYNE AND WEAR METRO PUBLIC

RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: july/august 2008 :: RMTnews 5 T he campaign to stop the privatisation of Tyne And Wear Metro has received huge support including from MPs who have signed Early Day Motion 1862 tabled by Newcastle Central MP Jim Cousins. Jim Cousins was also among the speakers at a campaign launch in Newcastle alongside RMT general secretary Bob Crow and Northern TUC regional secretary Kevin Rowan. RMT and the Northern TUC are distributing thousands of postcards urging the Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly and the Nexus Passenger Transport Executive to abandon plans to franchise Metro’s operations to the private-sector. The Early Day Motion 1862 notes that the Metro is a successful, integrated publicly owned and publicly accountable railway achieving record levels of punctuality and passenger numbers, and welcomes the government’s commitment to fund the upgrades it needs. It also notes that Metro’s own management had made the case that it should remain a ‘vertically integrated’ whole, and that passengers would be best served by the Metro remaining as a unified railway in the public sector, where every penny invested would be spent on improving passenger services. “This motion is a welcome boost for a campaign that has already attracted significant support from people who frankly have had a bellyful of failed privatisations,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said at the launch meeting. “Rail workers have more than enough experience to know that privatisation and the fragmentation that goes with it undermines safety and service, threatens jobs and pensions and drains huge sums of public money into private pockets,” he said. The union has argued that making £300 million funding for Metro upgrades conditional on privatisation was a pointless exercise because there is not even the usual pretence that private-sector involvement will bring any extra investment with it. Kevin Rowan told the meeting that opinion polls had consistently shown that the vast majority of rail users want their services back in public hands. “It is bewildering that anyone could want to privatise the Metro, which is a public-sector success story. “I hope Metro passengers will join us in campaigning to ensure that the Metro remains the public asset it is,” Kevin Rowan said. Get your MP to sign Early Day Motion 1862. SUPPORT GROWS TO KEEP TYNE AND WEAR METRO PUBLIC KEEP IT PUBLIC: RMT members at this year’s Durham miners rally campaigning to stop the privatisation of Tyne & Wear Metro. Over 70,000 people attended, with 45 bands playing and over a hundred trade union banners proudly displayed. For the first time ever, a plane flew over the march pulling a massive banner urging marchers to “Resist unjust Euro laws - don't give up the fight!”